Risk control deficiencies

The losses of at least £250m caused by Rami Goldstein's global equity derivatives team at the Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS) raises in an even more acute form than previous disasters the problems for a European universal bank of managing complex and risky financial instruments.

Goldstein was no Nick Leeson (ex-Baring) nor a Joe Jett, who laid low Kidder Peabody in 1994, nor even a Kyriacos Papouis, the swaps trader who left a £90m hole in NatWest Markets in 1996. So far as is known, Goldstein followed the prescribed procedures...